


Just Some Guy

by Ma_Kir



Category: Askewniverse, Chasing Amy (1995)
Genre: Alanis Morissette - Freeform, Character Death, Comic Book subculture, F/F, F/M, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Post-Break Up, Sad Holden, View Askewniverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 05:51:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18565243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ma_Kir/pseuds/Ma_Kir
Summary: Alyssa Jones reunites with someone she used to know, before a phone call.





	Just Some Guy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EloquentSavage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EloquentSavage/gifts).



Alyssa doesn't know what she's even looking at. 

It's like she's back in 2001, viewing a hybrid of the Adam West _Batman_ series spliced with _Beavis and Butthead_ with the Dynamic Duo smoking joints and her sister Trish's commentary on the sex drives of men overlaying a less than ambiguously gay interaction ...  
  
The only differences, this time, is that her sister isn't here to commiserate with, and neither is anyone else in this strangely empty theater.   
  
Except for one other person.  
  
He's a few seats away. It takes her a moment, really. He still has the goatee. Even after all this time, and however it may have made any other man look incredibly douchey, she's grateful that he still has it: otherwise he'd resemble the asshole piece of shit that videotaped them having sex, and then fucking her then fifteen year old sister. But that had been a comparison, in retrospect, and admittedly not even a fair one. This is a different man though, someone else entirely, disappointing in a whole other way.  
  
Alyssa sees that he's older now. A little hunched over. The goatee has many silver flecks. There are creases around his eyes and his cheekbones are more prominent. He still has the jacket, but it looks more worn and faded: just like him. She can't really explain or describe the expression on his face. There is some disgust, but it looks more ... wry, a cultivated and finely aged chagrin at the image playing on the large screen in front of them, and based on the way his eyes look down, himself as well. He is also holding something on his lap, in his hands that she remembers so well, that she can't quite make out.   
  
She can't really stand looking at the atrocity on the screen anymore. The awkward of distance and time is overridden by the need to get out of her seat. It doesn't even occur to her to just leave the theater. Maybe she wants to give the co-collaborator of this tragedy a piece of her mind. Maybe it's just curiosity. Perhaps the memory of a slim book in her hands, with its cover resembling her _Idiosyncratic Routine_ , back at a convention in 1998, and wondering about its creator is something far more interesting than ancient pain, and the sting of old fuck ups.  
  
"Hey." She says, as she sits down next to him. "So, I heard that there was this guy, who somebody knew once, who fucked up but gave a girl a pretty good comic that _almost_ makes up for that piece of excrement playing up there, and after many years away ... here he is, watching the comics pop culture war crime that he had wrought."  
  
She hears him chuckle, watching him shake his head. "I'm pretty sure I'm in hell, now."  
  
"Nah." Alyssa smiles, faintly. "You'd not find a demon like me this hot in hell, though ... if you see a pretty looking succubus, please send her my way, will ya?"  
  
"Oh, don't worry about that." Holden McNeil says, his eyes turning to face hers. "I'll be sure to pass along that message. You always liked visitors. Or was it visitors from the home team. I guess I forgot that line. I probably didn't hear it right. It's too bad it was wasted on me. It was a good one."  
  
He smiles, but it's a faint one. It's as though Holden has the memory of a grin, but he's forgotten how to actually draw it on his face, or write it around the cheeks and contours of his cheeks and jawline, or the set shape of his mouth.  Perhaps it's dream-logic, the kind that succubi and incubi, for that matter, ride towards their dreamers, but Alyssa reaches over and tugs the corners of Holden's mouth upwards. "Sad Holden." She says, in a sing-song, like she used to do in another place, and another time.   
  
This time, she swears she can feel the muscles on his face relaxing, rising to meet her fingertips. He's directly facing her now. He chuckles. It's the same, like from all those years ago. His voice is a little deeper now. Raspier with age. His hands hold hers. "You look just the same, Alyssa Jones."  
  
"And you look like shit." Alyssa says, but clasps his hands, from where he holds them over his.   
  
He laughs again, but she can hear the hollow sound behind it. "Well, it's been a while." Slowly, gradually, he lets go of her hands, and Alyssa almost can't even tell the difference. Something is different now. He _is_ greyer. Even the warmth of his skin, for all she tried to forget it, doesn't register under the touch that quickly disappears. He looks back at the screen, and then back towards her. "At least it's not _Batman v. Superman_. Poor Ben Affleck."   
  
"Savage." Alyssa actually misses his hands that a part of her knows she didn't quite feel. "Probably made more money than you."  
  
"Than both of us, I think." Holden says. "Enough to cry in. Nah ..." He looks at her, a distant fondness entering into his eyes. "There was a time, we made things that were worth more than money."  
  
" _You_ did, asshole." Alyssa replies, rolling her eyes at him. "Then you went all _Catcher in the Rye_ Salinger on everyone. I mean ... all you did was break my heart, Holden."  
  
"And fuck up my friendship with Banky too with a clusterfuck threesome idea."  
  
"Yeah. All of that." She pokes him in the chest. "We moved on. You didn't have to go all Obi-Wan Kenobi on us too." She feels something well up inside her. "I ..."  
  
"Nah." He says, holding up one finger. "None of that. Alyssa, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything."   
  
She scoffs. She can't help it. "I know that. You wrote a whole book about it. For me. This is just redundant now."  
  
"I'm a wordy motherfucker." Holden puts his finger to her lips. "But seriously, Alyssa Jones. I'm sorry. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. And I fucked it up. You ... like the home team, felt safe with then, but I was a visitor and I was a sore fucking winner. And a worse loser. And it was my loss."  
  
Alyssa doesn't know what to say. It's been years. Years. And this motherfucker still finds a way, finds a way to affect her, to hurt her. She can see the heartbreak screwing up his face for a few moments, creasing it, before she blinks, and it's as though it'd never been there at all. Just a sad, distant fondness in his eyes. Holden takes his finger away from her lips, and reaches down, handing her the object on his lap.   
  
"I guess I had one more personal thing to tell." He says to her. Then, he looks over her shoulder, and smiles. His worn features shift, and lighten. The calm that he talked about all those years ago that led to that last disaster between them is real now, and final. "I'm glad I found you."   
  
Then, he gets up. Alyssa wants to rise up to, but she can't. She feels like she shouldn't. He puts a hand on her cheek, that she barely feels. She doesn't feel it, again, when he lets go of her face, and walks past her. She turns, to see where he is going. He is in the middle of the aisle now, between the rows of seats. There is light ... from the projector, or the screen. A woman stands there. She is waiting for Holden. Holden kneels down, and she takes his face with both of her hands. There is a fond smile on her face as she kisses him on the forehead. Alyssa thinks she is profoundly beautiful. Then she blinks.   
  
And they are both gone.   
  
"The fuck ..." Alyssa murmurs to herself. "Leaving me for Alanis Morissette now? What the fuck, Holden ... It's always about you.  
  
"It's always about you ..."   
  
Then, she looks down at the book on her lap now, and sees ...  
  
_... birds ..._  
  
*  
  
"Alyssa."   
  
"Ugh ..." Alyssa blinks up, groggily, from her bed. She hears a song playing, over and again. It takes her a while to realize that it's her cellphone. Someone is pushing at her arm, trying to wake her up.   
  
"Alyssa, it's your phone! C'mon! Damn thing's been going off all morning."  
  
_"What if God was one of us ..."_  
  
Oh yes. That song. Alanis M ... no, Joan Osborne. Right now, in Alyssa's mind, it's Lilith Fair all over again. It certainly doesn't help that Kim is staring down. Kim. Again. Her hair's shorter now, dyed flat out white, her face more lined. Hell, even her tits -- some of her more marvelous features -- are sagging just a bit, though still fucking perfect. She can feel them, large and warm, burning into her back even under her _Strangers in Paradise_ T-shirt.   
  
"Answer it ..." Kim mewls. "Please baby ... it keeps going ..."  
  
"Goddamn it ..." Alyssa curses, feeling the Jersey sass enter her tone as she finally snatches the phone from her bed partner. It's bad enough she kept her up all night with the drinking, and the fucking ... which was never a terrible thing at all, come to think of it, and now she has the audacity to complain about the ring tone that _she made Alyssa choose for her freaking phone!_  God only knows why she keeps coming back to Kim. After all of her other relationships with the girls break down, she is always here, always waiting, dancing, giving her that self-important, self-absorbed stare, and sex lips, so self-absorbed even now but wanting her ... and it always seems like a good idea at the time, even if the time is recurring every couple of years over these past couple of decades.   
  
And then, there was the last time she sang at that bar in 1997 and she was there, and so was ...   
  
Alyssa pushes some of her hair out of her mouth, and activates her phone screen. It's a number she doesn't recognize. She sees it has, indeed, rang a great many times. She turns it on, bringing it to her ear.  
  
_"Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way h --"_

"Jones." She says, her voice flat, business-like. Perhaps she's gotten that Vertigo imprint gig, or Image has finally accepted her creator made properties.   
  
_"Hey. Jones. It's um ... it's, uh, Banky. Banky Edwards."_  
  
Alyssa pauses. The tone is huskier, deeper now with age and time. But yes. It is Banky Edwards. It'd been a long time. She can feel Kim stirring behind her. Kim, with her closer cropped hair, leaning her chin on Alyssa's shoulder. "Babe ...?" She asks, probably feeling her body tense in front of her. "What's up ...?"  
  
She curses the other's intuition overcoming her usual obliviousness. Instead, she speaks into the receiver. "Banky." She says. "It's been a while." _Since you helped fuck up one of my few relationships with a man a few decades ago_ , is what she doesn't say. "How did you ..."  
  
_"Let's cut the crap."_ Banky says, but there is something distant about it, something halfhearted. _"Hooper, he gave me your number. Um ..."_  
  
Something cold settles in the pit of Alyssa's stomach. She'd seen Banky in passing, at various smaller conventions. He'd been spending a lot more time with Hooper X these past couple of years. He'd never really gotten to "cruising," once he came out. She'd called it that first time she saw him, with his overcompensation and aggression, his territorial nature around his friend. He'd only, up until perhaps Hooper -- and she isn't even sure it's love or mutual physical aggression over the sexuality of Archie and Jughead -- loved one other man.   
  
"Banky." She replies, her voice a little softer. "What's ... what's going on?"  
  
At first, there is only static on the other line. She thinks she hears Hooper's voice on the other end, murmuring, not being his usual loud persona, or snippy tone. There is another sound she's beginning to pick up as well. It's this visceral noise, a deep heaving, almost a choking sound. It takes her only a few moments to realize that it's sobbing. Banky Edwards is crying.   
  
_"Alyssa ..."_ The man who "outed" her as "Finger Cuffs" to his best friend. _"I'm ... Upstate. Authorities called us. Holden gave me the rights to Blunt and ... they had me as his emergency contact for some ... god-forsaken reason ..."_  
  
He is breathing hard. She can tell he is hyperventilating. But his voice is distant to her ears now. The coldness inside of her has spread. She hears her own voice, and it's still steady. "Banky. What about Holden? Is he ... okay?"  
  
_"He ... he's gone."_ Banky's voice breaks. _"They found him. They ... dammit."_ There is this terrible coughing, choking that she realizes is some of the most bitter, grief-stricken laughter she's heard in a long time. _"I mean ... I talked to him a little bit ago, right? On the phone. Fucker didn't really go out that much anymore. Not since '98. We ... we talked and we were. I don't know. Good? Nah, you'd not care. Not after ..."_  
  
"Banky." Alyssa feels numb, not knowing what to feel, what to do. "I'm so ..."  
  
_"I knew the fucker since we were kids. You know? We were going to make it together. From Catholic School on. I never ..."_ There is a wet gurgling chuckle. _"He was working on some fancy fucking graphic novel. Some pretentious shit like some of the other things he made since '98. No ... no offense."_ He blows his nose, into the phone. Hard. _"Damn it. I knew he was living at a Farm. I just never thought he'd_ buy _it ..."_     
  
And then that attempt at bravado broke down into ugly, horrendous sobbing. Alyssa spent the time talking with Banky, with Hooper interjecting at times on the other end, trying to calm the other down, feeling empty ... distant ... In the life, loving women, knowing men that loved men, it too fucking common to talk about death, about ... suicide. It happened to straight people, of course. Or whatever counted as straight. Holden McNeil had mostly gone off the public grid since 1998, with a few appearances at smaller conventions from time to time. Alyssa personally hadn't seen him since '98, though they had exchanged some messages. She'd moved on. She'd had many girlfriends, when she wasn't simply being casual. Holden, from what she understood, hadn't really been with anyone else: as far she knew. It'd become that thing he used to talk about, about creating art instead of commercialism. It was one of the reasons he gave his share of the rights of _Bluntman and Chronic_ to Banky: that, or guilt. But maybe he had been out of contact for too long. Creators all have their up and downs, their issues with alcohol and drugs, their loneliness ...  
  
Their demons.   
  
There is going to be a funeral. And, obviously, a wake. She comforts Banky. She's not angry at him. Not anymore. She doesn't feel anything. Hooper asks her if she is okay, then adds it is a stupid question, and eventually they hang up.   
  
"Alyssa ..."   
  
It takes Alyssa a while, but she realizes that Kim has been with her, on the bed, this entire time. She feels something circling around the small of her back. Kim's been rubbing her back, this entire time, keeping her ... keeping her grounded? Alyssa closes her eyes. She sets the phone down. The back rub stops.   
  
Alyssa turns to look at Kim. Kim is regarding her, with a gaze she's rarely ever seen from her before. "My um ..." Alyssa begins, actually looking away a bit from Kim. "Holden McNeil. He's someone I ... I knew. He ... killed himself."   
  
"Oh ... oh god." Kim's voice is quiet. She scoots forward and holds Alyssa. "Sweetie. I'm so sorry."  
  
"He was ..." Alyssa's brow furrows, trying to concentrate on something. On anything else. "He was just ..."   
  
Then, she feels Kim let go of her. She's staring at her. Hard.   
  
"Alyssa Jones." She says, putting her hands on both sides of her face. "He wasn't just some guy."  
  
Alyssa squeezes her eyes shut. She's shaking. She hates this. She hadn't seen the fucker in years. She'd moved on. That fault line inside of her, the one she thought had been sealed like a fucking Chinese Finger Trap, the one he wedged himself into back during those months, some of those blessed, terrifying, heartbreaking months in '97, erupts. Kim doesn't break eye contact with her. She feels burning hot trails of moisture trail down her eyes. She remembers the rain. The times in bed. Their conversations. Her glee at making him uncomfortable. His snide remarks. The car outside where he hurt her. That damned television framed fish tank where he torpedoed all of their good will with his white cis hetero mess. And that day in '98 when he came to her convention when she was just with some other girl. Since when did Kim, of all people, get so fucking intuitive, after so many goddamn years?   
  
"Sweetie ..."   
  
Alyssa feels Kim embrace her. And doesn't think of much else for a time.   
  
*  
  
Alyssa sits in her kitchen. Her eyes, and the skin around her nose and face burns. Kim is making coffee, after having made sure she is all right. A part of her feels guilty. She has never loved Kim, a fact that they have both known, but -- especially now -- she deeply respects her in a way that the younger adults they had once been would have simply been incapable.   
  
She went through the motions of her day, clearing away her old work, tidying up clutter. She is now working on the mail that she's let pile up due to her fresh liaison with Kim, and her workaholism on her comics. And it's at that moment, of course, that she sees the parcel.   
  
She looks at the address. Upstate. Farmland. She sees the name. Alyssa opens the package. She's not sure how he got her address. She vaguely remembers telling him, during their last email interaction, where she lives now. The painting that she haggled with, and bought for Holden from that restaurant, when they were friends -- when they loved each other -- stares back at her from the book cover. The birds sitting on their pegs, from the water, the tempestuous sea around them, and the distant pink-tinged clouds in the blue-grey sky. She focuses on the distant ship. She feels the slickness of the cover and pages in her hands. There are differences, of course.   
  
Two figures are sitting on the pegs, like they are on swings, their legs actually swinging down from their seats as they watch the water, or look at the departing ship side by side, their discussion lost in time, cross-purposes perhaps, but uniting just that once from sheer curiosity and wonder. One last exploration on her part, the start of a new journey on his. And, in the distance, is the title of this piece: of this graphic narrative, this comic.   
  
_Finding Alyssa._  
  
She stares down at the book in her hand, a mixture of emotions. But all she can say are the words she recalls from that dream. The title bothers her. Just as the last one he sent her did.   
  
"It was always about you." She says, her voice hoarse from crying, and anger, and loss, and all the feelings seeing this last work of Holden McNeil brings her. "It was always about you." 


End file.
